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A Re-Pete Offender

There was quite a fair bit of late-breaking news this weekend. The Supreme Court's decision (see below). Pope Francis passing away (see below, again). And so, we had to hold off until today on the late-breaking news about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. For those who haven't heard by now, it turns out that (surprise!) the chat that accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic was not the only one that included people who should not be privy to, you know, plans for an attack that is about to happen.

The new reporting comes from The New York Times. The outlet talked to four different people who all said that at the same time the Signal chat with all the big Trump administration honchos was underway, there was a different chat with much the same information, and it included Hegseth's wife, Jennifer, his brother, Phil, and his personal lawyer, Tim Parlatore. The latter duo are Pentagon staffers (after all, nepotism is alive and well), but have no clear need to be kept apprised of ongoing attack plans. Meanwhile, Jennifer Hegseth is not employed by the government at all.

Some outlets reported this as another case of "bad judgment" by the Secretary. We're not so sure that applies here. Bad judgment is about making a poor choice, either because you misjudged the consequences or you just didn't know better. At this point, it seems pretty clear that Hegseth has moved from "bad judgment" territory into "the rules don't apply to me" land, and that he prioritizes showing off for friends and associates how big and swinging his di** is over such trivial concerns like, you know, national security.

And so, it's time for another round of "Will Hegseth be fired?" On one hand, Donald Trump, Karoline Leavitt and other prominent White House staffers are rallying behind Hegseth, and declaring that this is all the fault of the liberal media. On the other hand, there is so much unhappiness in the Pentagon over Hegseth's carelessness and his incompetent leadership, some Republican members of the House are calling for his ouster, and NPR is reporting that the process of finding a replacement for Hegseth is underway.

What seems clear to us is that Trump is having buyer's remorse about tapping Hegseth, but that he also doesn't want the embarrassment of admitting after just 3 months that he blew it on such a high-profile job. Our guess, such as it is, is that Hegseth exits sometime in the next month, and that the administration finds a way to frame it as Hegseth's choice. That said, if anyone seems like the type to say "I'm not going to leave voluntarily," it's Pete Hegseth. So, Trump might end up left with no choice but to fire Hegseth before the Secretary creates an even bigger and more embarrassing scandal. (Z)

Legal News: Time for a Trumper Tantrum

Now that there's been time to carefully consider the Supreme Court's emergency stay of Donald Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged "enemy invaders," there are a few nuances worth mentioning that did not make it into our piece yesterday.

To start, and most important, this was an emergency stay in every sense of the word. It was issued late at night; the latest that this particular Court has ever issued a decision. It was also issued on a holiday weekend, and without waiting for Samuel Alito to complete his dissent (which he published about a day later). All of this is highly irregular, and there's really only one reading: The Supremes decided that time was of the essence, because they simply do not trust the Trump administration anymore. In particular, John Roberts and his six colleagues (apparently) believed that if they did not lay down the law, the White House would seize the opportunity to get as many people on planes and headed to El Salvador as was possible. After all, the administration has taken the position that once someone is beyond U.S. borders, they are beyond the control of the federal courts.

Beyond that, reader M.H. in Te Horo Beach, NZ, who is a retired attorney, wrote in to explain some aspects of the case that we did not get quite right, because there are so many moving parts:

Let me help you to understand all of these cases. Judge James Boasberg was not appealed to the Fifth Circuit. He is in the D.C. Circuit.

What happened was that the ACLU learned that the White House was getting ready to deport a bunch of folks out of Texas. The flights looked like they were about to happen at any moment, so ACLU counsel rushed to the Northern District of Texas to seek a temporary restraining order (TRO) and to ask that the court certify a class action which would address the question of whether the administration can use the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to deport people as a general matter (i.e., without there being a war).

The judge in Texas did not move fast enough, so the ACLU went into overdrive and filed in the Fifth Circuit, and the Supreme Court, and also raised the issue with Boasberg in D.C. Boasberg said SCOTUS was pretty clear he had no jurisdiction and that it had to go through the Texas court and Fifth Circuit.

The Fifth Circuit threw out the request for emergency relief on the ground that the ACLU had not allowed the lower court to rule. The Supreme Court decided it did not care about such niceties, however, and issued its stay order, because they did not trust the administration to allow the process to proceed without putting the plane in the air. In other words, they did not want another argument that the plane is in El Salvador, so, oh well... (Alito later complained in dissent about not following procedure.)

In the meantime, the judge in Texas (James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee) finally ruled and denied the motion for a TRO on the grounds that the U.S. assured him that they would not deport anyone. Alas, what the U.S. actually said was that they would not deport anyone who had filed a separate lawsuit challenging the deportation. Of course, that left a lot of folks on the bus heading toward the plane. The judge also denied the request for a class action. The ACLU has now appealed that ruling to the Fifth Circuit.

In the meantime, the White House had filed a brief with the Supreme Court asking them to dissolve their stay order on the grounds that there was adequate notice, they crossed their hearts and hoped to die that no one would be deported pending review, and a class action is unwarranted. The ACLU replied and argued that the notices are completely inadequate because they are in English only and did not explain how to appeal the decision to deport. Further, how exactly were these people in detention going to get an attorney? The ACLU included a citation to a news video showing a bus full of immigrants heading to the airport, and argued that the class action should stand since all of the people on that bus have the same issue—whether the administration can use the AEA to deport people.

The Supreme Court has not ruled on any of this. My guess is that they will wait for the Fifth Circuit unless the Fifth Circuit drags its feet.

In the meantime, Boasberg has found probable cause to hold the administration in contempt, but he needs to identify who is to be held in contempt. So, he issued an order explaining what he wanted to do. The U.S. filed an emergency appeal, and the D.C. Circuit stayed his order. So far as I can tell, nothing has happened since. This case is different than what is happening in Texas, but the common thread is that the Trump administration is going to put people on planes no matter what any court says. It seems clear to me that the Supreme Court learned its lesson from the case that was before Boasberg and is not going to let that happen again with the case that is before the Fifth Circuit (or any other case). The lengths to which this administration is failing to follow court orders is frankly shocking and if SCOTUS does not put its foot down, we are going to see more of this in the days and weeks to come. This seems to be the first step.

Thanks, M.H.! The tea leaves would seem to suggest that, sooner or later, the administration is going to get adverse news on this matter from SCOTUS. It is at least possible the vote on the emergency stay was 5-4, since we know there were at least five votes for the stay, and we know there were two dissents, while the other two votes could be on either side of the question. That said, it would be unusual for a justice to dissent in something like this, and yet not join the dissent written by Alito (or to write their own), so the likelihood is that the vote was 7-2. If so, that plus the alacrity with which SCOTUS moved here does not say good things about the strength of the administration's legal position.

Of course, Trump is furious, and he spent yesterday screaming about how awful the Supreme Court is these days, and how it's just not possible to hold trials for so many immigrants. It would seem that, in his copy of the Constitution, due process is only afforded if the country happens to have the time and the energy, otherwise, tough luck.

And speaking of due process, Trump also took to his smaller-than-he-claims-like-so-many-things social media platform to share some important "evidence" in the case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Here's the picture that Trump posted:

Trump holding a black and white picture of a fist

It was accompanied by this message:

This is the man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, that the Courts are trying to save from being deported? He was supposed to be, according to the Judge and the Democrats, a wonderful father from Maryland, but then they noticed he had "MS-13" tattooed onto his knuckles (and lots of really bad stories about his past!). This is the gang that is, perhaps, the worst of them all. What is wrong with our Country?

And now, here is a close-up of the image Trump is holding:

The four fingers of the fist have a marijuana leaf, a smiley face with x's for the eyes, a cross, and a skull. Above those images is the phrase M S 1 3, below them are the words 'marijuana,' 'smile,' 'cross' and 'skull'

Garcia really does have those images tattooed onto his fingers. But the M S 1 3 and the 'marijuana,' 'smile,' 'cross' and 'skull' have been added via Photoshop. And not even well-done Photoshop; this is actually some of the clumsiest work we've ever seen. Meanwhile, the President of the United States is putting this forward as his justification for his no-due-process deportation. It does not speak well for any case the government might mount once this finally gets in front of a judge. (Z)

Another Rough Day for the Markets

It's getting a little broken-recordish, but the markets had another bad day yesterday. The Dow Jones was down 971.82 points (-2.48%), the S&P 500 was down 124.50 points (-2.36%) and the Nasdaq was down 415.55 points (-2.55%). The primary reason, according to market analysts, is Donald Trump's ongoing (and entirely one-sided) war against Fed Chair Jerome Powell. It would seem that when a president openly attacks the chair of the Fed Reserve, this creates "instability" in the markets.

We take it as a given that this kind of squabbling will have deleterious effects on the economy and on the markets. After all, investors want to feel there's a steady hand steering the ship of state, and another one steering the ship of the central bank, and that neither is under the control of a petulant man-child. We also take it as a given that Powell means it when he says he's not resigning, no matter what Trump says.

If you accept both of these precepts, we are left with only four possibilities, as far as we can see: (1) Trump is so poor at macroeconomics he does not grasp the first precept; (2) Trump is so poor at interpersonal relations that he does not grasp the second precept; (3) Trump cares more about venting his anger and settling his scores (as he sees them) than he cares about the health of the U.S. economy; (4) some combination of the above. As always, we freely admit we are not economists, so if any readers think we've misstepped in any of these three paragraphs, please do let us know at comments@electoral-vote.com.

On this general point, we've had several readers write in to note that Trump has now overseen nine of the ten largest one-day point drops in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Now, that is not an entirely fair framing, of course, because a 750-point, or 1,000-point, or 1,500-point drop was not mathematically possible when the DJIA was only 500 or 680 or 990 50 years ago. On the other hand, it's not entirely unfair, either, since Joe Biden squeezed 4 years in during the same era, and he has only one of the ten biggest drops (#9, which was on September 13, 2022, and saw the Dow drop by 1,276 points).

A fairer comparison is to look at drops by percentage. Here are the 20 biggest of those:

Date Close Pts. Lost Pct. Lost President
October 19, 1987 1,738.74 -508.00 -22.61 Ronald Reagan
March 16, 2020 20,188.52 -2,997.10 -12.93 Donald Trump
October 28, 1929 260.64 -38.33 -12.82 Herbert Hoover
October 29, 1929 230.07 -30.57 -11.73 Herbert Hoover
March 12, 2020 21,200.62 -2,352.60 -9.99 Donald Trump
November 6, 1929 232.13 -25.55 -9.92 Herbert Hoover
December 18, 1899 58.27 -5.57 -8.72 William McKinley
August 12, 1932 63.11 -5.79 -8.40 Herbert Hoover
March 14, 1907 76.23 -6.89 -8.29 Theodore Roosevelt
October 26, 1987 1,793.93 -156.83 -8.04 Ronald Reagan
October 15, 2008 8,577.91 -733.08 -7.87 George W. Bush
July 21, 1933 88.71 -7.55 -7.84 Franklin D. Roosevelt
March 9, 2020 23,851.02 -2,013.76 -7.79 Donald Trump
October 18, 1937 125.73 -10.57 -7.75 Franklin D. Roosevelt
December 1, 2008 8,149.09 -679.95 -7.70 George W. Bush
October 9, 2008 8,579.19 -678.91 -7.33 George W. Bush
February 1, 1917 88.52 -6.91 -7.24 Woodrow Wilson
October 27, 1997 7,161.14 -554.26 -7.18 Bill Clinton
October 5, 1932 66.07 -5.09 -7.15 Herbert Hoover
September 17, 2001 8,920.70 -684.81 -7.13 George W. Bush

As you can see, Trump is still lagging Herbert Hoover's five entries, and George W. Bush's four, although the way things are going, The Donald may soon claim the crown. That said, and we did not know this until we put this table together, the current president is apparently upholding a fine, and longstanding GOP tradition. Put another way: Man, there's a lot of red in that table. (Z)

The 7 Most Shameless Attention-Seekers in Congress

That is the headline of a piece published this week by Politico. When we saw the headline, we thought we'd come up with our own list of seven before clicking through, then see how our list compared to theirs. As it turns out, there was... not a whole lot of overlap. Here, to start, is a rundown of the Politico list, with brief summaries of their reasoning (note, they did not rank the seven):

What an... odd list. This is apparently the "third annual" installment (though we don't remember the first two), and we guess the Politico staff was working hard to be clever, and chose people they could give "witty" awards to, like "The Get Me to the Closest Microphone Award" (Burchett) or "The Most Likely to Mug for the C-SPAN Cameras Award" (Crockett). But still, you've got to be kidding us. Mark Warner? Really? Chris Murphy? C'mon.

And now, our list:

We recognize that no actual Democrats made the list. If we extended it to, say, 30 people, then there would probably be slots for Crockett; Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Adam Schiff (D-CA); and maybe a Jamie Raskin (D-MD) or an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). But most of these folks would barely crack the Top 30, if they did indeed make the cut, and it would still be an apples and oranges thing—as with Sanders, we think their attention-seeking is primarily about their ideas/agenda, and much less about themselves. With the Republicans on the list, it's almost entirely about "look at me!" and maybe "give me money!" Perhaps we are off our rockers, but it seems to us that this illustrates another substantive cultural difference between the two parties. Performative Mace/Greene style stuff just doesn't play that well with most of the Democratic base. There are no more Jim Traficants.

In any event, we were debating whether or not to even write this item when we got a heads-up from reader J.S. in The Hague, Netherlands, about how Mace and Greene (i.e., show horses 1A and 1B) responded to the death of Pope Francis yesterday. First up, Mace, who got on eX-Twitter yesterday to share this:

No, JD Vance did not kill the Pope.

The Left is absolutely nuts!

Approximately 100.0% of lefties (and plenty of righties) heard that Vance had the last-ever audience with Francis, and that Francis died a few hours later, and thought of (or outright said) things like: "Pope Francis survived a double pneumonia but not a five minutes meeting with JD Vance," or "JD touched a trophy and it broke. Then, he touched the Pope and he broke. I hope he shakes Donald's hand this week...," or "Now I'm not saying that JD Vance killed the Pope, per se. I just think his actions raise some questions, like for example: Did JD Vance kill the Pope?" Also, this picture was all over social media yesterday:

A picture of J.D. Vance shaking the Pope's hand, but someone has used Photoshop to replace Vance's suit with a black robe, and to put a scythe in his hand, so he looks like the Grim Reaper

These are, of course, JOKES. We defy you to show us a single person who: (1) really thinks Vance killed the Pope, and (2) does not have a demonstrated history of embracing conspiracy theories. This then raises the question: Is Mace too damn dumb to recognize a joke when she sees one, or is she just so desperate for "own the libs" tweet material she will literally seize anything?

Meanwhile, the always classy Greene had this to say on eX-Twitter:

Today there were major shifts in global leaderships.

Evil is being defeated by the hand of God.

Let us translate for you, in case you do not speak fluent jerk: "I have exactly as much evidence for my beliefs as you have for yours, but nonetheless I am 100% certain I am pure and righteous and you are wicked and will burn." Of course, Greene does not actually appear to have paid any actual attention to the evidence she has been presented, since we are unfamiliar with anything in Christianity that endorses taking pleasure in the death of another, particularly when that other devoted their life to the service of God, as best they understood it.

So, that's the latest reminder of the state of American politics. Sigh. (Z)

Democratic Presidential Candidate of the Week, #37: Jon Tester

Here are the candidates we've profiled so far:

  1. Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ)
  2. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
  3. Al Franken

And now, it's former senator Jon Tester.

Jon Tester wearing a plaid shirt, standing in a field, and smiling

Next week, it's #36, Jon Stewart. If readers have comments about Stewart running for president in 2028, please send them to comments@electoral-vote.com.


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